A quick one today, as is suitable for the subject (content follows form as casting follows couch), though nothing as quick as ol Victor Hugo could apparently be, when paying per word. . . but more on that later.

Politics make strange bedfellows, we always hear, and of course writers are strange just on their own. The former set loves to stand in the center of a room making bold pronouncements while having nothing to say, while the other group tends to creep around the fringes, offended that no one notices their astute (muttered) asides.

Politicos retire and make millions drawling reductive tales into microphones, while authors are lucky if they grab sufficient shekels to support their bar tab. Bar tabs that are created by the author having to review books like, say, Sarah Palin’s Going Rogue, knowing that out in the world people are doing more pleasant things. Things like having hornets inserted in their nostrils, or bathing in raw sewage while Newt Gingrich leeringly massages their scalp.